Plan B

Chapter Fourteen

In the end, it was purely because Gillian was a hard-core Brookie fan that Fran got away with it.

“Of course you’ve seen Francis before,” she scoffed.  “I was showing you all the pictures of Brookie’s roommate back at the station, remember?”

Aidan didn’t look convinced, but thankfully, he bought it.  After a few more questions, the interview wound up and the police departed, leaving Fran trembling under her duvet.  By the time Brookie returned, she was fast asleep, his iPod clutched loosely in one hand and one ear bud half-falling out of her ear.  Brookie paused to see what the track was, smiled when he recognised the music from The Lord of the Rings, and carefully replaced the ear bud.

Fran just about remembered the school matron waking her up to check on her, but it wasn’t until Piers knocked on the door that she finally became coherent and got out of bed.  It was early afternoon by this point, and most of the school was down on the games pitches, but Piers still wasn’t allowed to run on his sprained ankle.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as she opened the door.  Fran shrugged and stood back to let him in.

“Ish.  Don’t have a headache anymore.”

Piers sat on the end of her bed.  “And that thing with the police this morning?”

Fran stiffened.  The door slammed into the side of her head and she cursed.

“Return of the killer headache,” she grumbled, scanning her side of the room for the cache of icepacks Brookie had left there during the night.  “And ugh.  Don’t even talk to me about the police.  They think I might’ve killed somebody.”

“Well, they obviously didn’t think they have much of a case against you, because otherwise you’d be sitting in a holding cell awaiting trial,” Piers pointed out.

Fran grimaced and moved away from the door, allowing it to close.  “Well, unless I’m a ninja in my sleep and Brookie’s blind, I have a concrete alibi for Sunday, but I don’t for Saturday because I was wandering around town lost.  But I could be lying, for all they know.  And besides, there’s a reasonable case against me from that front.  Apparently the person was of my height and build, with identical hair and my coat.  And left a cigarette butt on the ground.”

Piers frowned.  “You smoke?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.  The point is that if the police decide they’re not looking for a serial killer but gang crime, I’m kind of screwed.”  Fran gripped her hair in her hands and started muttering to herself.

“Calm down,” Piers told her.  “It’s not as bad as you think.  Saturday apart, you have a good alibi for Sunday, and it’s not as if you’re the kind of person who gets involved in the gang scene, so—”

“But that’s the problem!”  Fran let go of her hair and started pacing.  “I used to be, and I told them I wasn’t because I didn’t want them to start getting suspicious of me.  And this isn’t gang crime.  I’ve seen gang crime.  They’ll waste their time if they go gang hunting.  But it’s not like I can tell them it’s not gang crime, because then they’ll want to know how I know, and if I didn’t say anything, I’d look suspicious.  But if I do say that I’ve had fringe involvement in gang stuff, their suspicions are going to be ten times worse than they already are, and I didn’t do it!  Hell, I don’t even know how to kill somebody.  I’m not strong enough.  I’m actually haematophobic.  I’m—”

Piers caught hold of her arm as she passed him for a fourth time and dragged her to a halt.

“Calm.  Down,” he repeated.  “It’s not as bad as you think.  Even if the police think you did it and they seem to have a solid case, as long as you tell the truth and stick to it, anything that’s not the truth will eventually unravel and there’ll be no problems.  Trust me.  I was falsely accused of sexual assault when I was your age.  I’ve been through it.”